UniNet is an European research initiative aiming to identify and investigate common mathematical structures in various complex networks, such as genetic, metabolic (particularly at our site), neuronal, ecological and economic ones.

In the consortium we are responsible for metabolic networks. Among the difficulties in modelling biochemical systems are: the high number of kinetic parameters involved, most of them unknown a priori, the large number of reactions in the network, which might make even the numerical simulations demanding, the multiple time-scales in the system, leading to stiff equation systems.

In order to find some solutions to especially the first problem, we employ Stoichiometric Network Analysis (SNA).  Our aim is to find conditions for stability or instability of the steady states without explicit knowledge of the kinetic parameters.